Gay students in Alabama find it easier, though support still not 100 percent

Elizabeth Garrett was once asked to remove her hoodie with a pro-gay slogan at her high school. (Special)

When she walks the halls of Brookwood High School, Elizabeth Garrett can hear the cruel things some people say.

The openly lesbian 15-year-old doesn't let it get to her. But it wasn't always easy for the soon-to-be 11th-grader in the Tuscaloosa County town of 1,828 people. At times, Garrett said, administrators treated her worse than her fellow students did.

She once gave in to a school officials' demand that she remove a hoodie with a slogan supporting other gay people. She was waved off by an administrator when she asked about bringing a girl to the prom.

Garrett eventually decided she'd had enough. She's not the only one.

In the nearly nine months since Hoover High School officials said a student couldn't wear a shirt supporting gays -- and reversed its position under threat of a lawsuit -- Oak Mountain and Hoover high school students formed gay-straight alliance groups. Those groups, advocates say, offer support for gay and lesbian students and their straight friends.

GSAs already were in place at Pelham and Homewood High schools, Indian Springs School and the Alabama School of Fine Arts. Others now are forming at Spain Park, Mountain Brook and Vestavia Hills high schools.

Motivated by news reports of the Southern Poverty Law Center fighting for the Hoover student, Garrett earlier this year contacted the SPLC for help.

At Brookwood, as with Hoover, the SPLC issued a letter threatening to sue if things didn't change. They quickly did, and Garrett, wearing a tuxedo, took another girl as her prom date.

"Public scrutiny is a powerful incentive for school systems to get it right. The law is on our side," said Sam Wolfe, the SPLC staff attorney who was at the center of those fights.

However, Sarah Noone, a 15-year-old sophomore and president of Indian Springs' GSA, said that, even in the wake of the Hoover case, students forming GSAs have run into opposition.

"There was a lot of backlash, but from students not administrators," when Oak Mountain's GSA was formed, Noone said. "Pelham was an issue; the administration was not supportive."

Shelby County schools spokeswoman Cindy Warner said there wasn't resistance at Pelham, but the principal did take time to research whether students had the right to form such clubs before allowing the group to organize.

Just like everyone else

Noone also is a youth leader at the Birmingham Alliance of Gay, Straight and Lesbian Youth, a group that has been meeting monthly, off and on, since 2003 at Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham. BAGSLY advisers said about 10 to 15 lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender youth and straight "allies" meet there each month.

The message BAGSLY and the GSAs hope to send, Noone said, is that LGBT youth are just like everyone else.

"We're not frightening. We're like the other kids," Noone said.

Following President Obama's endorsement of gay marriage and the end of the military's "Don't ask, don't tell," it's a message that LGBT advocates said is starting to be received in the Birmingham area.

One of BAGSLY's earliest youth leaders, 27-year-old Julian Sharpe, said he's pleased with the growing acceptance of LGBT people he's seen since his days as an ASFA student. But he said more needs to happen.

"There's been a tremendous amount of momentum in the last five or six years. Enormous progress has been made, but Alabama is certainly not at the front of the line," said Sharpe, who now lives in Ann Arbor, Mich.

When the BAGSLY group began meeting at the Unitarian Universalist Church, meetings were guided by LGBT adults who had navigated the waters of being young and gay to become successful professionals and could help the teens as they struggled with bullying classmates and unaccepting relatives, Sharpe said.

The young people shared their stories of abuse at the hands of classmates, teachers outing them to their parents, and parents threatening to throw them into the street, Sharpe said.

"Until then, they didn't have anyone they could turn to. We were able to provide moral support and build their self-esteem," Sharpe said.

Struggles still exist

But in deeply religious Alabama, struggles still exist, advocates say.

Glenda Elliott, who chairs the coordinating committee of the Alabama Safe Schools Coalition, said schools could be safer and more welcoming for LGBT students if anti-harassment policies specifically protected them.

In 2009, Alabama legislators passed a law requiring public school districts to pass anti-bullying and harassment policies.

The state Department of Education developed a model anti-harassment policy for school districts saying that violence, threats of violence, harassment and intimidation are prohibited based on race, sex, religion, national origin or disability. It did not specify sexual orientation.

An ongoing survey of school systems statewide by the coalition thus far has found that, in the Birmingham metro area, Birmingham and Trussville city schools, as well as ASFA and Altamont School, have policies prohibiting harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity, Elliott said.

Hoover's anti-harassment policy does not mention sexual orientation, but the school system's disciplinary policy provides punishment for students who bully because of sexual orientation, she said. Elliott said others in the Birmingham area may have such policies, but she is not aware of any.

Elliott said schools need such policies, and teachers and faculty need to be educated that the policy is there. "There's a real absence of that right now," Elliott said.

If teachers remain neutral, students might not report bullying or harassment, Wolfe, the SPLC attorney, said.

"School leaders need to set the tone," Wolfe said. "They have the power to send the message that all students are welcome. Otherwise, students are left feeling isolated and without a lifeline."

For many LGBT youth, the problem isn't in the classroom. It's at home.

In her 10 years with Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays of Birmingham, Patty Rudulph, the group's president, said she has seen an "evolution in attitudes" toward gay and lesbian people.

But many families are not accepting. At a meeting in April, a 17-year-old girl told the group she'd been kicked out of her house after someone outed her to her parents, Rudulph recalled.

"We are in the Bible Belt. Kids have been disowned," Rudulph said.

A 2006 study by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Coalition for the Homeless found that LGBT youth account for about 20 percent to 40 percent of the nation's young homeless population, while people who identify themselves as LGBT account for only about 3 percent to 5 percent of the nation's total population.

"I don't pay attention to anyone other than my friends, and they don't care," Garrett said.

But she was nervous to go back to school the day after news of her stand on taking a same-sex date to the prom appeared in newspapers and TV news reports across Alabama.

"People were mad because they thought prom was going to be canceled," Garrett said.

Her nerves were calmed when a teacher pulled her aside to tell her how proud she was, and she was buoyed by positive responses on her Facebook page. One message was from a former Brookwood student who said he had dropped out because he was gay and bullied and thanked Garrett for being brave.

"I hoped it would help other people because there are other people who aren't in the position to do what I did, because their families aren't as supportive as mine or maybe they don't have the courage," Garrett said. "I wanted them to know they can stand up for their rights."